Westport to Centralia

Sunday, August 19: 71 miles

Sunday we started riding from the local high school to Centralia. The course was nearly all flat. The day was cool to start, gradually warming enough for us to get down to biking shorts and jerseys. We met a couple on their single bikes who were from Chicago, Ric and Toni. Turns out they are actually tandemists in disguise! We rode with them for about 2 hours, keeping a very good pace. He used to own a bike shop. She teaches spinning and does ultra riding events, including the 720 mile Paris-Brest-Paris endurance ride. They were fun people to ride with. When they stopped for lunch, we continued. We don’t like to stop during the day’s ride.

Centralia’s Riverside park held the 100 or so tents of our traveling group. There were also the 18-wheeled shower truck, the 18 wheeled kitchen truck, the refrigerated truck, the two cargo trucks, 8 support radio vehicles, and the bike doctor van (Courtesy of Bicycles West). We were quite a circus! The shower truck was by far the best. 8 stalls each for men and women plus unending hot water. They were great.

Each night featured a camp meeting when we learned about the next day’s ride. They wouldn’t give out the route map until the morning of because they were afraid people would go out on the course before they sent out the course monitors. It made every day more of a surprise than was necessary. We spent most of our afternoon and evening sitting around camp visiting with our new and old friends.